Toni Morrison Quotes

If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.

There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge - even wisdom. Like art.

I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

From my point of view, your life is already a miracle of chance waiting for you to shape its destiny.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are

You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human... And although you don't have complete control over the narrative - no author does, I can tell you - you could nevertheless create it.

Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.

Make a difference about something other than yourselves.

Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.

All important things are hard.

A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.

It's important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Someone says you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.

You are your best thing

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

Racism will disappear when it's no longer profitable, and no longer psychologically useful. And when that happens, it'll be gone. But at the moment, people make a lot of money off of it, pro and con.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.

Misery don't call ahead. That's why you have to stay awake - otherwise it just walks on in your door.

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

Laughter is more serious than tears.